Illegal surrogacy unit raided
A team of police task force officers and district medical and health officials raided Kiran Fertility Centre at Sai Kiran Hospital on Road No. 14, Banjara Hills, on Saturday night and found that it had carried out 48 surrogacies without following procedure. The 48 women in various stages of pregnancy were housed in an apartment complex.
Dr K. Padmaja, district medical and health officer, said, “No permission was taken by the unit to double up as a surrogate clinic. It is not even registered as a fertility centre. They are only registered under PreConception and Pre-Natal diagnostic Techniques Act. But here we have found a full unit functioning without following the prescribed guidelines of the health department.”
The police received a complaint from Hyderabad and Delhi. This complaint led them to alert the DMHO who along with the task force officers raided the centre.
A team of police task force officers and district medical and health officials raided Kiran Fertility Centre at Sai Kiran Hospital on Road No. 14, Banjara Hills, on Saturday night and found that it had carried out 48 surrogacies without following procedure.
For a surrogacy unit, permission has to be taken from the local state office and guidelines of Indian Council and Medical Research have to be followed.
A senior health official of DMHO department said, “Kiran Fertility Centre is only the tip of the iceberg. There are many such centres running in nooks and corners of the city where apartments have more than 25 to 50 surrogate mothers holed up. The clinics are next to these apartments. The surrogate mother acts and behaves like a local resident so that she draws minimum attention. Action can be taken only when there is a strong complaint and this was seen in the case of this centre.”
The cost of surrogacy in the fertility centre is `2.5 lakh.
They have centres like the one raided in Bengaluru, Gurugram, Nepal, Kenya and Ukraine. Kiran Fertility Centre officials refused to talk about the action taken by the health department.